Overview

Fashion knockoffs are everywhere. Even in the out-of-the-way markets of highland Guatemala, fake branded clothes offer a cheap, stylish alternative for people who cannot afford high-priced originals. Fashion companies have taken notice, ensuring that international trade agreements include stronger intellectual property protections to prevent brand “piracy.” In Regulating Style, Kedron Thomas approaches the fashion industry from the perspective of indigenous Maya people who make and sell knockoffs, asking why they copy and wear popular brands, how they interact with legal frameworks and state institutions that criminalize their livelihood, and what is really at stake for fashion companies in the global regulation of style.  

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Reviews

"""Reading Regulating Style, one could imagine the IP conditions described by Thomas as unfolding in Bangladesh, the Philippines, or any of the myriad of other places that produce clothing for the fashion industry. Alongside a historically-specific disregard for and de-legitimization of Mayan culture, the refusal to acknowledge the informal rights of clothing pirates has produced a form of colonial dispossession increasingly common around the world. However, as Thomas also shows, by appropriating a fashion brand, marginalized communities can subvert not only corporate domination and appropriation of locally-produced value, but also the socio-economic and political conditions that cause oppression."" * PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review * ""This is a methodologically rigorous, carefully crafted, innovative book. Besides being an example of thorough academic scholarship, it becomes evident that the author has exceptional knowledge of and authentic concern for life in the Maya highlands. This fundamentally anthropological study raises many interesting questions with respect to the global IP framework and its impact on development."" * ReVista *"

Reading Regulating Style, one could imagine the IP conditions described by Thomas as unfolding in Bangladesh, the Philippines, or any of the myriad of other places that produce clothing for the fashion industry. Alongside a historically-specific disregard for and de-legitimization of Mayan culture, the refusal to acknowledge the informal rights of clothing pirates has produced a form of colonial dispossession increasingly common around the world. However, as Thomas also shows, by appropriating a fashion brand, marginalized communities can subvert not only corporate domination and appropriation of locally-produced value, but also the socio-economic and political conditions that cause oppression. * PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review *

This is a methodologically rigorous, carefully crafted, innovative book. Besides being an example of thorough academic scholarship, it becomes evident that the author has exceptional knowledge of and authentic concern for life in the Maya highlands. This fundamentally anthropological study raises many interesting questions with respect to the global IP framework and its impact on development. * ReVista * Reading Regulating Style, one could imagine the IP conditions described by Thomas as unfolding in Bangladesh, the Philippines, or any of the myriad of other places that produce clothing for the fashion industry. Alongside a historically-specific disregard for and de-legitimization of Mayan culture, the refusal to acknowledge the informal rights of clothing pirates has produced a form of colonial dispossession increasingly common around the world. However, as Thomas also shows, by appropriating a fashion brand, marginalized communities can subvert not only corporate domination and appropriation of locally-produced value, but also the socio-economic and political conditions that cause oppression. * PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review *

Author Information

Kedron Thomas is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is coeditor, with Kevin Lewis O'Neill, of Securing the City: Neoliberalism, Space, and Insecurity in Postwar Guatemala.

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